A Day In The Life Of…

10 Sep 2014
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2 min read
Matthias Mittermeier, Executive Chef, Pastry school Pfersich TREND-FORUM tells us why the art of pastry-making is nothing other than an attempt to imitate the beauty of nature…

In my school, no day is the same because there is a different programme every day. I usually get up at 6.15am to be at the school by 7am. I’ll check the patisserie school’s emails and go through all the news on Facebook. Then I’ll either start preparations for the demonstration or the seminar for the coming day. That means weighing all ingredients, labelling them and preparing the equipment. Demos and seminars will be on from 9am-12.30pm, followed by lunch. Sometimes I’m holding the demos and seminars myself, but sometimes I also have chefs who come in from outside. Every year in September I choose the chefs who will come in the following year. They will be experts in their fields or megastars of the pastry business, because my motto is: you can only learn from the very best!

From 2pm the seminars continue or I’ll do some more preparations. After that there’s always time for developing new ideas or recipes, as well as testing new products and equipment, finishing at about 7.30pm. We’ll have dinner together at around 8pm and at 10.30pm I’ll check my emails one last time.

For me, it’s an absolute dream job, working with the best pastry chefs of the world and introducing international luminaries to my guests.

But it’s also a challenge working with so many different nationalities and their mentalities. Then you also get the various fields of expertise: chocolate, molecular techniques, barista, dessert creations on plates from three-Michelin-star kitchens, wedding cakes, petit fours, fingerfood etc.

My own specialities are sugar artistry in chocolate & dessert plate creations with molecular techniques.

What makes it all even more special is that the school is situated in the largest store for patisserie, confectionary and ice cream in Germany. This means that I have more than 140,000 different products at my disposal. I can work with more than 200 different kinds of chocolate. If at any point a company develops a new product and brings it on the market, I will be one of the first to have the product. It’s a real luxury and I never need to think about whether I can buy a certain piece of equipment, or order it and wait for it to be delivered – no, I can just go into the warehouse and get it.